Gingerbread Women
by darlingfox
Summary: The minute I saw her face, the second I caught her eye. The minute I touched the flame, I knew it would never die. [A Peter fic.]


_Title: Gingerbread Women_

_Rating: PG_

_Summary: "The minute I saw her face the second I caught her eye / The minute I touched the flame I knew it would never die" A Peter fic._

_Disclaimer: The world and characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and the lyrics are from Sting's "__Saint Augustine__ In Hell". I'm just borrowing them and I don't make any money of this._

_A/N: Thanks and dedications to Edana Blue. She gave me the lyrics and requested a story._

_If somebody up there likes me, if somebody up there cares_

_Deliver me from the evil save me from these wicked snares_

My mother used to make gingerbread cookies every Yule. She had done it long before I, the oldest of her three children and the only son, was even born and a thing such as a little child could never have made her abandon that particular tradition. Her own mother had inherited the cookie recipe from her mother who had in turn got it from her mother and so on for centuries. The men of the family were never made familiar with the mysteries of baking for Yule festivals.

That is, until I was born. Being the only child for the next ten years mother didn't have a daughter to bake with. So when I was old enough, certainly not more than a wee two-year-old, mother let me help her and years later she made me memorise the recipe by heart, for once not caring my father's fierce protests. He believed strongly in tradition and in the sexual distinction.. Kitchen wasn't a place for a man, just like tools weren't fit for the hands of a woman. Cooking definitely wasn't manly enough for a boy, much less to his only son and heir.

I have my suspicions about why he finally gave in. It never happened in front of us children, but my grandmother told me later that that rebellion cost my mother a weeks worth of wearing illusion charms. By that time she certainly knew the most effective ones. Mother told me once that she never regretted it, and I cherish my memories of her and myself in the kitchen, tasting the spicy dough and laughing just for the sake of laughing.

Mother was specialized in gingerbread people. She didn't use moulds or magic but cut them with a sharp knife instead. I had no business in touching that, ever, and a nasty incident with a hot cauldron taught me to believe her word. She made little people and bigger people, and I always imagined them as happy families. When I was older mother let me decorate them with sugar-frosting, and she didn't mind a bit even though I made a mess and ate it straight from the cornet. I always tried to do it in secret but somehow she found out it every time and to my amazement just laughed. My favourite cookies were the large woman-shaped ones. I loved to make different designs on their dresses and mother always made sure that she cut their hems really wide.

My father never entered the kitchen.

_Not into temptation, not to cliffs of fall_

_On to revelation, and lesson for us all_

When I was old enough to go to Hogwarts, I was terribly worried how I could make cookies from there. It feels silly now but back then I was certain I wouldn't see my mother and little sister again until the summer would come. I hadn't realized we had a holiday between the terms and that we would actually be allowed to return to our families. Mother assured me that I could come home for Yule, and that she might even let me cut a figure or two all by myself now that I was a big boy. Needless to say, I felt like I was ten feet tall and ready to face almost everything when I entered the train for the first time.

Some people said that the smallest of things can change person's life. Well, my life certainly changed when I met the three other boys who would become my roommates for the next seven years and friends for years beyond that. I have to admit I didn't like them at first. Two of them were the loudest, most arrogant boys I had yet had the pleasure to meet, and the third was very quiet and withdrawn. I think it took us two months to get him talk to us as an opposite to us starting a conversation with him. Regardless of our differences, we eventually became friends.

Not that I had much of choice on that matter. We were the only Gryffindor boys on our year and it was inevitable that we would become close. I know that everyone else saw me following James around like a dog follows his master. I admit it, of course, but how many of them paused to think why I did it? Not many, I can assure you. I knew from the beginning I wasn't as smart as the other three were, and as for physical strength… well, the less said the better. So it was a choice between following James who could protect me from bullies, or being at the receiving end of their jokes and merciless teasing. It wasn't really a choice.

We four shared almost everything in our years at Hogwarts. Dormitory, meals, homework, latest rumours and our collective first-year crush to a certain blond Hufflepuff Prefect. That doesn't mean we didn't try to keep secrets from each other. Sirius didn't want to talk about his family, and it took us a whole year before he finally told us he was the first Gryffindor, or to be precise, a non-Slytherin in his family for generations. James didn't want us to know that some of his relatives had been on Grindelwald's side when he had tried to rule the world a few decades before our time. And Remus, of course, had his little monthly problem.

I never told them about cookies.

_I don't know if it's pain or pleasure that I seek_

_My flesh was all too willing, my spirit guide was weak_

My father died when I was sixteen. He had been on his way home from the Hog's Head on a cold March night when a group of men attacked and killed him and a couple of his drunken friends. There was just enough left of them to be recognised but not nearly enough to fill a coffin. He was cremated at Ministry's, a special treatment for all the victims of the Death Eaters, and I left the school to attend his memorial service.

I have no clear memories of that. Not because of some kind of emotional outburst, but because I was too busy comforting my crying sisters. They were so sincere in their grief that I almost was ashamed of feeling nothing but relief. A feeling I shared with my mother who didn't shed a tear or blink an eye when father's ashes were scattered in the wind. In fact, mother and I were so calm and collected that it was the main subject of discussion of the old matrons for several weeks after the event. Some of them surely knew why. Not everything can stay hidden, no matter how hard you try.

That night, after she had put my sisters in their beds, mother came to the kitchen and sat down, suddenly looking very tired and very small. I did the only thing I could think of and took out the syrup and flours. It was the first time I made a gingerbread dough. Mother just sat there, following me with that haunted look until it came the time to cut the cookies. She made only gingerbread women, a line after another with hems wider than ever before. We didn't say anything when they were in the oven and afterwards mother decorated them. Then we sat around the table, opposite of each other and looking at the pile of cookies in front of us. On every skirt was written in mother's neat handwriting one single word. So there we sat, staring at the bastard-cookies until mother began to chuckle and then I laughed, too. We laughed and laughed, and then we were both crying until there weren't any tears left. I stayed awake the whole night while mother slept on the couch, her head on my shoulder and soft hair tickling my neck.

I don't know what happened to the gingerbread women.

_I was deadly certain thoughts for me weren't kind_

_A switchblade in his pocket, murder on his mind_

They didn't know who I was when they first abducted me. By that time the Death Eaters were a widely known threat and their Master's name was feared all around our world. We were all afraid for ourselves and each other. The Ministry was run by desperate, scared people who had no chance at all to create any kind of peace or balance. Order of the Phoenix, that was what we called us. Named after Headmaster's beautiful pet-phoenix and identified by nobody. People didn't know who we were but they knew someone was fighting for them. We gave them hope.

Like I said, they thought I was an ordinary citizen until one of them remembered seeing me with James, and they all knew whose side he was on. There probably wasn't anyone who didn't know how he had sworn to bring the Death Eaters down. But that was nothing compared to his fiancée's rage after her parents were killed. She was fiercer, more powerful than any of us could have imagined and the sheer force of her will left us standing in awe. She truly was an amazing woman.

But now I went astray. Their original and simple plan was to have little fun with me and good old Cruciatus Curse before killing me but that new information brought a change to that. Why kill me at all when they could get so much knowledge of the resistance just by asking. And torturing a bit, naturally. Death Eaters never miss an opportunity to do that. The thought of forcing me to do it more or less willingly came from her.

The gingerbread women my mother made were delicious. Not too soft, beautiful and their taste and smell were just so spicy and perfect that I had to force myself away from them. She was just like the cookies, only colder and harder. She stepped from behind me just in time to stop the most enthusiastic of Death Eaters from hitting me with a curse or two. And then she looked at me. So beautiful and, as I later found out, so terribly intelligent and deadlier than any of her Master's men. And she smelled just like my mother's cookies. Dark, warm and exotic enough to leave me literally drooling after her.

From that moment I was hers.

_Relax, have a cigar, make yourself at home._

_Hell is full of high court judges, failed saints._

I know what I said in the Shrieking Shack, that I did it because they would have killed me. That was only partly true. Yes, they would have killed me if I hadn't agreed with them. No, I didn't tell everything because I was afraid of death. There's no point of being afraid of something you have to face sooner or later. I did it because it was the only way to get to her. She said that they could torture me to get the information and a reluctant spy who would try to betray them, or they could ask what was my price. After getting an approval from her Master she asked what I wanted. There was a reason I was a Gryffindor.

Surprisingly, she said yes. I was shocked when I heard she was married, but her husband didn't mind. Apparently they had always had, shall we say, a free marriage. It was some time later when I found out her maiden name and exactly whose cousin she was, but by then it was too late. I was so enchanted by her that I would have sold my former friends to them again and my soul to boot if I'd got more time with her. But I didn't have to. She seemed to be enjoying our time, too.

It isn't about love, it has never been and never will be. I honestly doubt if there's a spark of love in her heart to give to anyone. I can still love and do so, too. My remaining family, mother and sisters who believe I died years ago, is constantly on my mind and always in my heart. This is about needing and on some level liking each other. I'm no threat to her and I can give her what she needs, in and outside the bed. Her reputation protects me from the others and she in turn can give me everything I want. But I know that if our Master would order her, she would kill me without a second thought. And I still can't let go of her.

Because she's my gingerbread woman.

_The minute I saw her face the second I caught her eye_

_The minute I touched the flame I knew it would never die_


End file.
